Sims - LMG (alt.)

Description

The third single off of Bad Time Zoo, released earlier this year, showcases SIMS in a new way, animated. SIMS explains how the video came to be by saying, “I usually have decent ideas when it comes to conceptualizing music videos, but this one was a challenge. The song itself is borderline cheesy as is, which is why Beak and I love it. We knew the video couldn’t be too cutsie and could absolutely not take place in a bar. After those parameters, we were out of ideas so we enlisted the services of Matt Scharenbroich, a really talented visual artist and the drummer in Beak's old band TPC.

Created in director Scharenbroich’s studio over the course of an icy winter in Minneapolis the “LMG” video is the end result of more than 1600 individual drawings, 400 cups of coffee, 60 markers and two ecstatic hands. The video was made using a technique called rotoscoping, which is “the tracing of live-action film frames in order to capture a more realistic movement. It has an immediate kinetic energy that results from the inevitable variation of the tactile mediums used throughout. Markers smear and fade, graphite scratches into the page, and ephemeral, singular ideas punctuate single frames in the rhythm of the process.” Sounds simple right?

The video highlights the contrast between the confessional, dark narrative of the verses and the overjoyed, positive message of the chorus. The diaristic song felt sincere and energetic, and rotoscoping “captures SIMS’ performance and catapult it into another more joyful sphere where fingers transformed into bottle rockets and fireworks emerged from palms.”